What is a narrative review?
Critiques and summarises a body of literature
draws conclusions
identifies gaps
qualitative
What are the weakness of narrative review?
- large no. of studies make it hard to draw conclusions
What is a systematic review?
aims to answer specific research questions
Gathers all relevant data
rigorous appraisal
quantitive
What is meta-analysis?
tests a hypothesis. statistical anaylsis on medical studies, researching the same thing which are expected to have some degree of error
What is meta- synthesis?
Brings together qualitative data to form new interpretation of research field.